Lobby: Gran Melia Jakarta
Stereoscopy: Stereoscopy consists of two simultaneous space-based observations.
Or:
“The simultaneity of virtual and real environments” (from “Perpetuating Cities: Excepting Globalization and the Southeast Asia Supplement”, Bishop, Phillips, and Yeo, in : Post Colonialism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes, Routledge, London, 2003.)
The Magical Misery Tour is waiting to take you away, waiting to take you away, take you away…
Photo: The Jakarta Post 7/22/09
Your bus awaits. All aboard.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Today our tour takes us to Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality where our senses will be ignited by the horrific scene of a second wife burning.
As seen here by The Jakarta Post:
First wife burns second wife in front of husband
Multa Fidrus , The Jakarta Post , Tangerang | Wed, 07/29/2009 9:13 PM | Jakarta
“Jenni, 35, a resident of Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality, has burned Euis, 25, her husband’s second wife, after their husband Sahroni, 40, asked them to live together with him in peace and share the house.
Tangerang Police chief Sr. Comr. Hamidin said Wednesday the incident started with Euis promising she would divorce Sahroni after entrusting her baby to Jenni.
“But later Euis came to Jenny and asked for her baby back,” Hamidin said.
The two argued and Jenni took a jerrycan of gasoline, poured it onto Euis’s body and set her on fire.
Jenni then rushed to the police station with the baby to turn herself in. Euis was taken to hospital with 90 percent of her body burnt.”
Then we are off to The Gran Melia Jakarta for an early lunch.
Timeless Luxury with an Avant-Garde Flair
Discover the Bold New Shade of Luxury.
As you must know the
“Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel is a stimulus of exoticism and mystery; imbued by the warmth and passion of South East Asia. A dramatic structure, towering over the community of Kuningan, looking out to Jakarta’s elaborate skyline.
The luxury hotel’s unique, swerving architecture is coated in a distinct azure that seemingly drifts into the clouds. Within, Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel broadcasts a similar and enchanting aesthetic, communicating the spirit and vitality of Indonesian culture with grand, cascading ceilings, and evocative décor.
Situated at the heart of Jakarta’s exclusive diplomatic and business district, the hotel is in exact vicinity to the city’s premier shopping malls, attractions, and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Gran Meliá Jakarta’s world-renowned restaurants and bars, event facilities, spa, and tiered accommodations are fashioned by a discriminating auteur and showcased as a bold new expression of luxury.”
Lunch is served. We certainly hope that you bring a hearty appetite. You will need it.
We will then continue our tour to the site of the St. Moritz. A self-contained city within a city.
Come to Jakarta and not see it at all.
In fact come and never leave as all your wishes, desires, and needs can be serviced in one cradle to the grave stop.
St. Moritz will become to a global city in Asia
” Mochtar’s first grand son, Michael Riyadi will leading the projet of St. Moritz Penthouse and Residences in this year projects, a multi billion dollar projects to establish a new business district in Puri Kembangan, West Jakarta.
St. Moritz will have 17 buildings that will provide 11 centers in one area, including office buildings, apartments, schools, a hotel, a hospital and a mall.
This project will be a blast in the future and will help people to cut commuting time in Jakarta. The office building has 65 floors and will be the tallest in Indonesia.
The 135-hectare land plot is designed to be a self-sustaining business district with a block concept. We also want the new business district to be a global city, competing not with other developers, but with other cities in Southeast Asia.
This projects will become to a global city in Asia and also have a competitive advantage. Property prices in Jakarta are among the cheapest in the world.
According to Global Property Guide 2008, the average apartment price in Jakarta is US$1,068 per square meter while in Manila it is $1,969. In Kuala Lumpur, it’s $1,400.”
Well, I bet you have never seen anything like it!
Oh, we’re not done yet! Not by a long shot.
Prepare yourselves now to see THE REAL JAKARTA!
As reported by CNN:
Slum tourism: Visitors see the ‘real’ Jakarta
JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — Hidden in the alleyways behind Jakarta’s fancy malls and in between the high-rise apartment buildings is what Ronny Poluan, a former film maker, calls the “real Jakarta.”
It is not far from the glitz and glam that dominates the capital’s skyline, yet it is a side of the city that few foreigners ever see.
“I want them to (have an) authentic view,” Poluan, who runs “Jakarta Hidden Tours,” said as he took a group of Australians through the winding maze of a central Jakarta slum.
“I’m running out of rice,” an old lady mumbles in the doorway of her tiny dark home as the group passes by.
Further along, little girls push their faces into wire fencing, while another group of children draw 36-year-old Daniel Knott into a game of cards. Knott, a volunteer for various NGOs, and his wife, who works for AUSAID, live in Jakarta and have been to the slums before. But it is the first time their friends, Kerri Bell and her husband Phil Paschke, have been to Indonesia.
Knott said he felt it was important to bring the visiting couple here.
“I think Jakarta is a city of contrasts,” he said. “There’s a lot of shopping malls and kitschy stuff, but it’s also a lot of normal people. And, it’s fun to come and hang out with the locals, actually.”
“It’s fantastic,” Kerri Bell said. “I’ve been in Asia once before and we didn’t want to just gloss over the surface and see all the things you can see in a western country. It feels to me much more like the real Jakarta, to see what drives it. To see that is so much more valuable than coming and lying on the beach.”
The tour first took them into a couple of cramped and sweltering soy bean cake and tofu factories — both staples in the Indonesian diet. Video Watch Arwa Damon tour through the slum »
The group remarked that there were few other cities where foreigners can wander around the slums, and not just feel safe but welcomed — and that is what Poluan said these tours were all about.
“I want to see people meet people,” he said. “The other culture meet the other culture.”
“It’s a pretty big eye opener,” Paschke said. “It’s the first time I have left Australia, so yes, it’s completely different.”
Poluan ushered the group into a covered market where you can find just about anything. For the group, it was a bombardment of the senses.
“I love seeing them,” fish seller Rokayah said, laughing. “They are handsome and they are rich. It is rare for me to see foreigners here at the traditional market, and I like talking to them, but I don’t understand English.”
The tour costs around $34 per person. Poluan keeps about half of the money for himself and his NGO, INTERKULTUR. The other half goes to the community.
Critics, however, said that this type of direct cash aid was counter-productive. They said the tours were demeaning, exploited the poor, and taught them to be dependent on the handouts of others.
“These poor people, we have to educate them,” said Wardah Hafidz, coordinator of the Urban Poor Consortium. “We have to tell them that it’s not God’s will that they are poor, that they also have to fight for themselves. They can’t depend on other people forever.”
This type of criticism angers and frustrates Poluan, who said his tours were about raising awareness on both sides. In the last month, he has also started a microfinance scheme.
More importantly though, he said, were the initiatives that he hoped his tours would jumpstart.
“They (the foreigners) usually think about how to help, to educate,” he said. “They come back again, bring books. I try to make a pushcart library for the children.”
He said his tours were also about educating foreigners on real issues facing the country.
The group weaved its way to the city’s train tracks, only barely visible amid the garbage and squalor.
It is the site of a constant battle between the track dwellers and the government, which says that living there is illegal and dangerous. Government evictions and the destruction of the feeble structures, usually just bits of plastic tarp and wood, are fairly commonplace.
“I am used to it,” shrugged 80-year-old Indarjo.
He has lived like this for five decades, making his living as a scavenger. He said he has been forced to move over 200 times.
He invited the group into his home, and explained that when it rains, he just pulls the flap over.
“I feel that I am equal to them. I treat them as my guests,” he said. “I believe that they would do the same for me.”
The visitors were dumbstruck, the impact of what they were seeing, they say, was hard to put into words.
It was a sobering but educational look at Indonesia, where some 40 million people live below the poverty line.
“It’s pretty confronting,” Paschke said. “The things you complain about at home don’t seem too significant.”
“It’s hard to see something like this and just go home to normal life,” his wife, Bell, added as the couple stood in the middle of the tracks. “It makes me motivated to look at the local community and things that we can help out with at home.”
Yes, see Jakarta now in its unreal realness. Really.
At the end of the day we will whisk you back aboard our open air bus to the JW Marriott or Ritz Carlton. As you prefer.
They’ve just reopened. It’s business as usual.
Next up, high tea at Jakartass Towers where we will converse at length on the subject of what is real and what is not.
